I ask you, how would you like your mom, your wife, your daughter to spend $100,000 to go to Harvard or some state school, and go out into the workpla….

I do a movie once every four years and they call it a comeback..

I don't want to be an actress, because I think that they have to be really pretty, and I'm not..

Struggle and survival, losing and winning, doesn't matter. It's entering the race that counts. You enter, you can win, you can lose .... but it's all….

I'm still trying to do films about black women..

Sometimes I'm a little Republican, sometimes I'm a little Democrat..

My passion is to tell stories that reflect humanity..

Oh, there's going to be debate because you're dealing with the Bible and religion is supposed to be separate from state and that to me is already a c….

At the beginning, my ambition was never to break down doors. It was just to earn tuition for myself and work in an industry where women hadn't been a….

Coming from the '50s, things were very violent. We were still being lynched. If I drove down through the South with my mother, I might not make it th….

It's the best honor when someone wants to use as their professional title the name of a character that you portrayed..

We have to have films about action and violence and special effects. That's the sad part, but you know what? It's not me doing it..

Women were victims. Their husbands could beat them up when they wanted to. They couldn't work. They could be maimed and killed by their husbands..

Anything involving the camera, you're passionate about. Because there's no movies without it..

Coming from the '50s, things were very violent..

Women are allowed more freedoms and we're fighting for more freedoms, we're experiencing more freedoms won..

There are just certain realities about our world and I just happen to be creative within it..

Yes, you can have art films about the triumph of the human spirit and all of that, but you'll have it done with a big-budget icon with a $20 million ….

Me and my sisters were taught that if our eyes worked and our legs worked, we were beautiful. We had so many kids in our family that if we all got in….

Sometimes I'm angry, sometimes I'm not angry..

I never thought I was pretty. I couldn't even put on eyelashes or makeup..